Guitar Solos With Skateboards

Prepare for more Terribleco history as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the blog! For today’s trip down memory lane, we have 2009’s “Guitar Solos With Skateboards” uploaded to the blog for the first time ever. There is one caveat – The DVD I ripped this from was buggered so there are some unfortunate skips/cuts around Joxa’s part. The rest, however, is in tact.

If you’ve never seen this video, you can find out all about it from this review that appeared in Sidewalk Magazine, and then read on for some more guff about it’s production.

Guitar Solos With Skateboards

by Terribleco

What Is It?

Coming straight out of Coventry, this, the latest in a long line of videos produced by the capable hands of “Ade The Terrible”, does exactly what it says on the tin: Skateboarding set to a variety of rock music, most of which will incorporate a guitar solo at one point or another.

Who’s On It?

Rosko, Chris Mander, Ade The Terrible, Tony Lui, the mighty Joxa, and cameos from plenty other folk.

Highlights

From the get go, it’s clear that this is a straight up “made for laughs” scene video that contains plenty of real skating at sketchy spots, backyard bowls and Coventry parks, with front rocks on haggard quarters rating considerably higher in importance than switch flips down ten stairs.

I’m not sure who the unnamed character that ends the first montage is, but his leap over a massive downhill road gap would class as the first major highlight of the disc – severe props, son!

Rosko takes the first section and comes through with some pretty unique antics, including alternate use of skatepark hubbas, boneless variations down stairs and stopping mid line to kick walls.

Chris Mander follows, skates to a Cookie Monster penned anthem and gets busy on the local park hip whilst donning his ninja outfit.

DVD maker Ade The Terrible bangs out a full part of pole-jams, lines at Coventry bank spots and gets stuck into the most fun looking backyard pool I recall seeing in recent times.

The second montage sees Chris Johnson handling his business on the Ideal mini ramp and another complete unknown banging out a seemingly impossible hardflip wallride, with a short, bowl based edit from the recent Boardroom comp in Leicester sees everyone from Nick Zorlac to Derby Daz getting in the mix.

Tony Lui’s section contains the most amount of flip tricks on the DVD, though he’s clearly not afraid to get involved with a bowl session or get stuck into a rugged bank if required, either. Keep an eye out for his own take on 360 hippy jumps and the airwalk ender.

Full time Sidewalk forum type Stephen “Joxa” Delves holds the curtains. Starting off by making his opinions on handrails very clear, Joxa then continues to power his way about an assortment of less than perfect bank spots, dropping lien disasters on tall transitions, and getting his gnarl on at The Boardroom. Joxa’s a beast!

Overall

If you live in the Coventry area, know any of the dudes involved or enjoy watching traditional, no budget British scene videos, then direct your interweb browser of choice towards www.ridecoventry.com at your nearest convenience. It’s worth the asking price alone for the ‘bear’ extra and the sat down pole jam slam…

The Story Of “GSWS”

You may perhaps spot something of a tone shift between Storybook (2008’s video) and this one (released in the first half of 2009). Like all videos prior to this one, Storybook was heavily inspired by another major skateboard video. In particular, it was me trying to copy Blueprint’s phenomenal UK skateboarding opus “Lost & Found”.

The shift in tone from faux-Blueprint to the utterly stupid and daft presentation of Guitar Solos With Skateboards can be attributed to the influence of two people: Joxa and Swampy. Up until this video, I had primarily been heavily into street skating, flip tricks and the occasional ledge trick. I preferred plaza’s over anything else, and although I have never been the most technical of skateboarders, I very much enjoyed skating ledges.

Joxa and Swampy both popped up on my radar at the time when I had just about got to grips with skating bowls, and really, really enjoyed skating them. Therefore, I ended up skating with these two dudes a lot – I lived with Joxa during the making of Storybook, and we had eventually discovered Swampy’s backyard bowl “Swompton” via the magic of social media.

Skating with these two dudes just drove me a get more and more into the whole sub-culture of crusty bowl skating: Watching Thrasher videos from P-Stone, listening to hardcore punk & metal music, building shit yourself and then skating it. This was also combined with spending days watching videos like Heroin’s Live From Antarctica, the Beez trilogy, and eventually Steve Reeves’ “Mall Grab”. Skateboarding was entering a very daft, silly phase, and I wanted in.

Compared to previous videos, there is no one “inspiration” skate video for GSWS. You could argue that Live From Antarctica had some influence, but I think there were a huge collection of skate videos on DVD, on Youtube, and on social media, that had an impact on me for the style and editing. As mentioned, the biggest influence was the dudes I was directly skating with.

This mantra of “We’re here to make skateboarding silly” spread like wildfire amongst the other skaters in the crew. Rosko took it up to 11, just pushing his skating to some very odd, and entertaining places. Chris Mander wanted a Cookie Monster song for his part, and dressed up as a ninja to do tricks. Even people who didn’t have full parts were increasing the silliness – Tom Albrow’s legendary slam trying a pole jam whilst sat on his board proves that we weren’t taking anything seriously at all.

Tony Lui (with his first part in a Terribleco video) literally did long lines where he played jazz with his skateboard and did whatever incredible shit that came into his brain. Swampy would hit up his bowl and skate it better than anyone, but doing the maddest, gnarliest, and daftest stuff. There was no indication that anything we were filming was epic, Blueprint “Lost & Found” levels of brilliance – we were just having fun with skateboarding again. It was raw, rough, and rad.

The reason why GSWS is important is that I feel it’s the very first Terribleco video to really nail down what this blog’s video style was. Following on from the blueprint (no pun intended) set out by this video, everything else afterwards has a way more consistent style and tone. This is a tone that eventually led me to make Cthulhu, and Cthulhu ended up establishing what I consider to be the quintessential Terrible Company video experience – something I replicated for Ghostface, and something I am keeping in mind for the next video I make.